This September I got married. It seems like a distant, sepia toned fairytale memory now, especially after a winter of continuous illness. looking back it was indeed the best day of my life, EVER, as it should be of course for the Bride and Groom. I am also quite proud of how enjoyable it was for our guests; I’d say about 60% of people said it was the BEST ever wedding they’d ever been to (and some of them had even been to other weddings). We also managed to make it lovely and beautiful on a very tight budget (with A Lot of help from our family and friends), which is, again, how it should be as it is all about the LOVE and the people and the sentiment in the end. However, spending copious amounts of money is the nature of the wedding beast, so I thought I would share some cost saving/ crafty/ general tips with you…

Inspiration

When thinking about your BIG. DAY. It can sometimes be overwhelming organising your thoughts on how you want things to look etc, being a ‘creative’ type I of course had very specific ideas, however it was sometimes difficult to communicate them, and when people asked me about ‘colour schemes’ I would break into a sweat! I found it really helpful looking at wedding blogs for inspiration, my absolute favorite was;

From the start I knew I wanted something vintage, I love the thrill of wearing something truly unique and this was especially important to me on my wedding day, buying vintage is also a sustainable option as well as a cheaper one. I also found that the vintage dresses had a better quality to them. However finding a vintage dress to suit your taste and fit you can be a long and daunting task, after many unsuccessful trips to vintage shops I turned to the internet and luckily found my beautiful dress on;

They had a huge selection of dresses from lots of different era’s and their service was really friendly and reliable. After trying on a few different styles I decided on this 1950′s gem with a silk organza underskirt and a broderie anglaise detail.

Bunting

4 months prior to the big day I began making homemade bunting, if only to achieve some feeling of being organised in a sea of stress and procrastination, it was a surprisingly productive mission, in the end I produced about 20 meters. I bought a few different fabrics from Ikea which were cheap and pretty, made a triangle template and dusted off the sewing machine. It was a really effective way of decorating a large sparse marquee.

Table Decorations

For the table’s I bought some Liberty fabric from a seconds warehouse and made some long table runners, I also bought a LOT of fabric doilies, which i scattered randomly on the tables. I finished the look with loads of random flowers from my mum’s garden haphazardly arranged in jam jars that i had decorated with bits of fabric.

For the top table I used Marmite jars, as Mr is a massive lover.

The Cake

The cake was lovingly made by my mum, and we decorated it ourselves. It took a long time and needed some special equipment, but making and arranging the icing flowers was really creative and it saved a few hundred pounds.

Photography

I think that a good photographer is one of the things worth spending the money on, I cannot recommend http://www.platinumweddingphotos.co.uk/ enough, Brothers Mike and Rich are two of the nicest people you will ever meet, They captured so many genuine natural moments that I will treasure forever.